Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

Some days force you to linger, fragmented, at this fragile life. Our living then becomes lost to the demands for survival. A little over 4 years ago, cervical cancer came crashing into our world so that we began to labor so others may still have fragments of their own lives. Until you have lived through a death, you will never understand why we have to survive, even if in pieces. At least, in Nigeria, 22 women; in the US, 12; in Missouri, 2 – each one a thread in the vast tapestry of suffering woven by cervical cancer, may have another chance to survive, because we choose to stand. And so if we are closing doors, if we open doors, it’s all so the threads can be unraveled, the pattern reclaimed. Cervical cancer doesn’t have to have the final say. Not when in disruption, in candid discourse, in deliberate choice, we find our way forward. For Angie, and for the countless women who bear the scars of this disease, let us choose this path. The one where elimination is possible.